Title: Spoon fed
Author: fanficwriter101
Pairing: gen
Fandoms: Sherlock/1980's Granada Sherlock Holmes
Disclaimer: The characters from the show aren't mine, they belong to others. No copyright infringement intended. Any characters you don't recognize are mine. Feedback would be nice, positive feedback would be nicer. Enjoy!
Category: Sherlock (BBC 2010/12 and 1980's Granada adaptation crossover) ficlet
Rating: R to be safe for content not topic
Characters: Ensemble
Series: No
Spoilers: None intended but anything from Seasons One and Two (including the unaired pilot) from the 2010/12 series and any episode of the Granada adaptations might get a mention.
Summary: Two eras, two men, two other men.
Archive: Just tell me where it's going
Additional 'stuff': I think this will be a 'marmite fic'. You'll love it or you'll hate it. I'm hoping it's somewhere in the middle but I'm not holding my breath. This isn't intended to be anything other than it is. John taking care of Sherlock. Watson was taking care of Holmes. It was ever thus.

***

2011...

Two hours earlier...

John signed the release forms without comment. The reception desk at the central London hospital wasn't the place he would choose to yell at his flat mate. That would be, as always, Baker Street. He watched as Sherlock limped, slowly and apparently painfully, to the automatic door.

As he approached the door, Sherlock was relieved it opened, allowing him to exit A&E without having to use, or move, his grazed, blistered and swollen hands. And, more importantly, postpone John's inevitable and mostly rhetorical questioning for at least the time it would take to get a taxi.

**********************

Baker Street...

Sherlock's head turned fractionally. Used to Sherlock's miniscule non-verbal signals John saw, and reacted to, Sherlock's movement. He paused, the spoon momentarily in mid-air and then returned it to the bowl, leaving it there.

Sherlock reclined a little, a hand coming up to rest on his slightly swollen belly.

"Full?" John asked without appearing to be interested in the response.

Sherlock licked his lips, the taste of the broth still lingering at the corners of his mouth. "Thank you, yes."

John got up and walked into the kitchen, emptying the leftovers into the bin, leaving the spoon and bowl in the sink for later. He returned quickly to Sherlock's room and smiled, shaking his head at the drowsy figure slumped in the bed.

"Just a minute then you can sleep Sherlock."

John rearranged Sherlock's pillows, covered him with the bedclothes and walked to the door, flicking the light off. "'Night Sherlock."

The sleepy muttered response wasn't identifiable English but John bother asking for a translation.

A few minutes later his phone rang. "Mycroft...yeah, it was stupid...no, there's no permanent damage to Sherlock or the flat...no...I wasn't there...he's asleep...yeah, I'll tell him. Goodnight."

John walked back to Sherlock's room and stood in the half-open doorway, his mind already on his blog. "What am I going to call this one Sherlock?"

1891...

Two days at least, Watson calculated, since Holmes had eaten a proper meal, got a proper night's sleep or stopped trying to work out how the woman he was certain was guilty of arranging her husband's murder had done it when she was in hospital and, he had been assured, quite insensible with a life-threatening fever which had only broken after the man had been found dead. He had had enough. He woke just after eight o'clock and dressed and went downstairs to where Mrs Hudson was boiling eggs and making toast.

"Good morning Doctor Watson. Should I make anything for Mr Holmes this morning? It's such a shame to waste good food when..."

Watson interrupted the now-familiar tirade. "Please do...just an egg and some toast, thank you Mrs Hudson."

Later...

Watson smiled apologetically as Holmes swept into his room, slamming the door, leaving their housekeeper holding the breakfast tray in both hands. "Thank you Mrs Hudson. I think we'll manage."

After handing the tray to the doctor, the woman left the room tutting and muttering about 'starvation' and 'starving children'.

Watson ignored the housekeeper's departing comments and followed her to the door, locking it behind her. Picking up the tray, he headed towards the closed door or Holmes' room. Without knocking - mostly because his hands were full of the tray and he only just managed to open the door - he walked in and tried to hide his smile at the scene before him. Holmes was curled up on the bed, his back to the room, appearing to anyone who didn't know him as well as Watson believed he did to be fast asleep. "Holmes...breakfast." Watson said without pause for, or expectation of, a response.

"I am not hungry."

"Nevertheless, you will eat some toast and a boiled egg."

Holmes turned over suddenly, looking up at Watson with a gaze that suggested he was, in fact, hungry. For knowledge, at least, if not food. "You cannot possibly deduce that from a brief examination of my torso Watson."

"I'm a Doctor, Holmes, or had you forgotten? I can tell a lot from simple observation."

Holmes' face twitched as he realized he was close to losing the argument. "It's cold. You wouldn't possibly expect me to consume cold breakfast. I could become unwell."

Watson lowered the tray and showed Holmes the egg-cozy covered twin egg cups and the cloth-covered toast, one corner just poking out from under the white napkin.

Pouting and huffing Holmes lifted himself up a little and stared challengingly at his friend, colleague, and most recently, apparently, Mother Hen.

Watson placed the tray on the dresser and cracked open one of the eggs, tore a corner off one of the pieces of toast and, after dipping the toast into the egg yolk moved it towards Holmes' mouth. He was pleased to only be kept a waiting a moment before Holmes' mouth opened and, reluctance writ large on his face, he accepted the morsel held in Watson's fingers.

After he had chewed and swallowed the toast and egg, Holmes grinned widely. "Identical twins."

Watson chuckled. "Well done Holmes."

If he was referring to Holmes' consumption of the food or solution of the case, Watson didn't qualify his response and Holmes didn't ask.

End

***